Warmth flooded between her legs, and she pressed in against the muscled hardness of his thigh. His hands slid down from her shoulders, along the length of her back, pulling her closer, communicating his desire. Against her hipbone, she felt the hard bulge of his erection, and looked up to see him staring at the buttons on her blouse.
"You aren't wearing your bra."
"I was sunbathing nude while you were away," she admitted. Although she had fair hair, her skin bronzed easily, just like Daisy's and Jenna's.
Kirk groaned. "God, Claire. You drive me crazy sometimes. I wish I could have seen…"
He brought his hands up her sides, then trailed them just under the swell of her breasts. Lightly, he reached for the tiny white buttons on her blouse.
"So beautiful." Kirk took the weight of her breasts in his hands, drawing his thumbs over her nipples. Pleasure arced along her sensitized nerve endings.
"Ah." The soft sigh floated from her throat out into the night.
Kirk pulled her to the lounge chair where she'd lain only hours ago. As he undid the zipper of his shorts, he caught her gaze and asked, "Is this okay, Claire? I want to make love to you so badly…"
Was it okay? Was it even right?
Claire knew her thinking was foggy right now. He'd said he loved her, but did that erase all that he'd done?
And what about her? She wanted him right now—she couldn't deny that But did she still love him? She didn't know the answer to that question.
"Claire?" Kirk eased her onto his lap, stroking her face, her hair. "Do you want to stop?"
His words were kind, his touch sweet, but sitting on top of him, she could feel how hard he was for her. And she was equally hot for him.
Maybe this was one of the ways for them to get closer, to repair the damage they both had suffered.
An affair doesn't have to mean the end of a marriage.
Claire placed her lips on his. Not a real kiss, just a touch. And whispered, her breath mingling with his, "Make love to me, Kirk. Right here. Right now." it went fine; really, it did. Right up to the very last moment, when the shock waves had weakened to tremors, when Kirk had fallen to her side, their bodies still joined, their breathing still hard.
A sob choked out of Claire's throat, and she realized she wasn't fine. Not at all.
"What is it, Claire?" Kirk held her face to his shoulder.
She pulled back, unable to breathe. Pushing on his chest, she slid out from beside him and brushed back the hair from her face. Kirk was concerned, worried. He sat up and reached for her, but she moved quickly to the side, gathering her clothes, feeling the tears as they fell from her face onto her hands.
"You're scaring me, Claire. Please talk to me." But she just shook her head.
How could she have thought that all that was wrong between them could be solved so easily, so tidily? How could she have made love to this man, who had betrayed her, who at the very moment of coming inside her body had perhaps thought of someone else.
Janice.
She pulled on her shorts, her top, fumbled with buttons and the zipper. "You said you never made love to her. But did you kiss her? Did you touch her?"
Kirk's arms were wrapped around his bare chest. He looked confused, befuddled. "Let's not talk about that now, Claire. Please…"
''You did, didn't you? You kissed her…" God, this hurt, maybe more than anything else so far.
She wasn't surprised when he nodded, confirming her fears.
"Why do you want to ask these questions when the answers are only going to hurt you?"
"Because I need to know. You touched her, too, didn't you?"
She backed away, hating him then and hating herself even more.
Kirk stood but didn't try to approach this time. "No, I didn't touch her. Not in the way you mean."
So that was the bottom line, was it? He'd kissed Janice but had gone no further. In real life. But how about fantasy? If he'd been in love with Janice, he must have thought about her. Maybe even when he was making love with his wife. Maybe even this time…
Maybe thoughts of Janice, not Claire at all, had made him so hot…
She pushed through the screen, wanting only to put space between them. Oh, God, this hurt so much she couldn't stand it She splashed water from the kitchen faucet over her face, but her shoulders were still heaving with her sobs.
She'd never cried like this in her life. Wrenching sobs that she simply could not control. He claimed he loved her, but how could he? No one would hurt someone he loved the way he had hurt her.
Kirk came inside, closing the screen carefully behind him. "Please let me help you, Claire." His tone was anxious; she- could see that he felt terrible, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except her need to cry.
A key chain hung on the hook by the door, and she grabbed it. She had to get out of this house before she woke the kids. "I'm going for a drive."
"Not like that." Kirk ran toward her. "You're in no condition—"
"Leave me alone!" She twisted from his arms and grabbed the door handle, her avenue for escape. "Leave me the hell alone!"
She realized she'd taken Kirk's car keys by mistake but didn't for a second consider going back inside to exchange them. Instead, she unlocked the front door of his sedan and slid behind the steering wheel. She could see Kirk standing at the kitchen window, looking gray faced and distressed.
She took comfort in the knowledge that he couldn't see her, sitting here in the dark. She'd thought to drive to some deserted laneway. Someplace safe and quiet, where she could be alone and just cry. But now she didn't want to move.
She didn't want to think, either, but unfortunately that was all she could do. Think of her husband and Janice, imagine them in each other's arms, mouths locked…
No! The picture was more than she could stand. Had he thought of her, Claire, at all? Had he felt any guilt at the moment he'd broken his wedding vows to her? Claire pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, wanting to erase the kisses she'd found so sweet earlier.
She glanced up. Kirk was still standing by the kitchen window. Did he have any idea how tempted she was to start the car and drive as far away from him as she could? She did not want to have to deal with this situation he'd placed them in. What woman would? To choose between living with a man who'd fallen in love with another woman or leaving him, thereby depriving her children of a safe, stable home with both their parents.
And she was pregnant! If she left Kirk, who would be with her in the deli very room when this child was born? When she gave that last push and the doctor announced the sex, was anyone going to care besides her?
Claire rested her arms and head on the steering wheel and allowed the sobs to explode from her chest. No! No! She cried until it hurt too much to cry anymore, and then she searched the car for a box of tissues.
She thought she'd put one in the glove compartment the last time she cleaned the car. She flicked the switch and the compartment door flew open, triggering a tiny interior light. Claire pushed past the car manual, the ice scraper, the map of Ontario.
No tissues. But something else was in there, something small, shiny, cool to the touch. She curled her fingers around it and pulled it out.
A tube of lipstick. And it wasn't hers.
Claire stuck the keys in the ignition and started the engine.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Where the hell was Claire going? She was too upset to be driving. Especially late at night on backcountry roads.
Kirk stepped away from the kitchen window and contemplated the remaining set of keys on the hook by the door. He was tempted to go after her, but he couldn't leave the kids alone.
Maybe where she was going at this time of night wasn't the point. She wasn't headed anywhere. She just couldn't stand to be in the same house with him anymore.
He'd never heard her cry like that before. To him the walls still echoed with the sound, bringing back another time, another place.
His mother and his father,
arguing in the kitchen while he hid under the bed in his room. Shouted accusations, flung in both directions, followed by the slamming of the front door. And then sobbing.
Animal-pain sobs, the kind torn from your gut when mental pain becomes physical and your logical mind has simply given up.
That was what his dad had done to his mom, and that was what he'd done to Claire.
Kirk felt a sob of his own rising from his chest, and he quickly forced down a glass of water.
At least his kids hadn't witnessed the scene. At least they were safely asleep. He went into their rooms to check, then returned to the kitchen, where he reached into the cupboard over the fridge in search of brandy left over from last summer. There it was.
He pulled down the squat brown bottle and lined a tumbler with a couple of inches. Then he went out and sat on the slate steps, hoping the cooler night air might make it possible for him to draw a breath without feeling as if his lungs were about to cave from the weight of his guilt.
The brandy was gone in two minutes. He set the empty glass on the step and got up to pace the lane. He counted eighty-four steps to the top of the drive, which connected to the access road that led out to the highway. Which way had she turned once she got to the paved road? Toward Port Car-ling? Or Port Sandfield?
What did it matter? As if he could find her either way.
He retraced his steps to the cottage, the dark of the night pressing in on him, reminding him of his culpability.
And the real hell of it, the bitter irony, was that only when he saw Claire break down had he realized how much he only did love her. It was like that moment when he slipped on his glasses and all the stock quotes in the morning paper suddenly became legible.
He saw that his infatuation with Janice was precisely that. He saw that Claire was the woman he wanted to spend his life with. And he saw, God help him, how much he'd hurt her with his own confusion.
Sinking onto the top stair, he cupped his head in his hands and closed his eyes. Please let her be all right. Please let her come back. Please let her give me another chance.
Even if he didn't deserve it.
Old memories. At twenty-four, when he'd met her, Claire had been the kind of woman every young man dreamed about. Pretty, blond and buxom, with an outgoing personality and natural confidence to spare. He'd been amazed when she'd agreed to go out with him, and was soon captivated by her ability to see humor in almost every situation, and by her practical, no-nonsense intelligence.
His Claire.
He'd thought of her as such for years, even though he'd always sensed a core to her spirit where he was denied access. She was kind and caring to family and friends, with the strongest maternal instincts of any woman he'd known. But with him, she held something back.
Still, she'd been his friend, his lover, the mother of his children. Now he wondered why he hadn't been happy with that, why he had felt that she owed him something more. Something he himself couldn't really put words to.
Kirk was still on the step, his head cradled in his hands as he drifted in and out of sleep, but now he straightened his shoulders and looked ahead.
Although the sun hadn't yet risen, there was a lighter quality to the dark, or so it seemed to him. At a different pitch from the birds, which had already begun their morning chorus, he could clearly make out the sound of an approaching vehicle.
Soon, he saw the nose of his Volvo sedan through the screen of tree trunks. Claire, heading down the drive. Relieved, Kirk stood. It wasn't Claire, though. The car was his, all right, but Mallory was at the wheel. She parked about ten yards from him, then got out from the driver's seat reluctantly.
Mallory's brown curly hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing faded jeans with fraying hems, and a T-shirt short enough to reveal an inch of her flat belly. He noticed her feet were bare, and she carried something small in her left hand.
"Where's Claire?"
"She's at my place. Sleeping." Mallory pressed her lips together, then glanced at the bedroom windows of the cottage. "Are the girls okay?"
The question annoyed him. "Of course they're okay. They're sleeping. It's early in the morning. What in hell did you think they'd be doing?"
She took a step back. "Okay. Sorry. I didn't mean to accuse you of anything."
"Oh, really?" Then what was she doing here? She'd come to give him hell for hurting Claire. And he deserved it. He shoved his hands in his pockets and moved over toward the woodshed.
Mallory followed. "Claire is a mess, you know."
"I know." He pulled in a deep breath of air, then forced it out. He wished he could meet Mallory's gaze, but he was suddenly afraid he might break down. Staring at the ground, he choked out a few words. "Believe me, I feel terrible about that."
"I do believe you." Mallory put a hand on his shoulder.
He was surprised at the gesture. He'd expected Claire's friends to rally solidly behind her, against him. Certainly, Mallory and Drew had been cool enough toward him during lunch at the Conroys'.
"Drew and I want you guys to work this thing out," Mallory said. "And I still think you can. But you've got to appreciate how hard this is on Claire.
You know how she likes order in her life. This feeling of being out of control—well, it scares her. It certainly complicates matters that she's—"
"Pregnant." He picked up some stray logs the kids must have been playing with and threw them back on top of the stack he'd chopped last fall.
He turned to face Mallory. "I intend to look after her, to love her. If she'll let me…"
It worried him that now Mallory wouldn't look him in the eye. "I know, Kirk. But it might take some time. It doesn't help—" She sighed, then sat on the fat tree stump he used as a chopping block.
"What?" The block was big enough for two. He perched tentatively on the edge and looked down on Mallory's profile.
"She found this in the glove compartment of your car." Mallory opened her left hand, revealing a gold-colored tube of lipstick.
"Oh, hell."
Mallory passed it to him, and without thinking, he tossed it far into the trees and the scrub.
"It's Janice's, isn't it?"
"Yeah." Why the hell had she put the lipstick in his glove compartment? He remembered her pulling down the vanity mirror to freshen up the last time he'd taken her to dinner. That had been the night he'd revealed he was going to tell Claire about them. He groaned, thinking of the colossal mess he'd made of things.
"Seeing something tangible that belonged to Janice made the situation so much more real for Claire."
"Yeah. I can imagine how she would feel." How would he like it if he found another man's belongings hi his wife's van? Just the idea made his chest swell with pain.
"Anyway—" Mallory stood and looked down at him "—Claire fell asleep just half an hour ago. I thought I'd let her sleep until she wakes up on her own. I'm not sure, but she'll probably come home then. She won't want to worry the kids."
"No," he agreed. To hell with him. She wouldn't care a bit for how he was feeling. And truthfully, could he blame her?
when Claire drove down the lane toward the cottage shortly after nine in the morning, Andie was sitting on the front step, wearing cutoff jeans and an old soccer T-shirt. Her hair, which she obviously hadn't combed yet this morning, was a riot of red curls around her pale, freckled face.
The poor kid did not appear happy. Claire took a deep breath and glanced at herself in the side mirror as she got out of the car. She looked terrible—pale and red eyed—but hopefully Andie wouldn't notice.
"Good morning, hon. Have you had breakfast?"
"Daddy made pancakes." Andie stared down at her bare feet. "Where were you last night, Mom?"
Claire sat on the step next to her daughter. "Didn't Dad tell you?"
"He said you went to Mallory's. But why?"
The clear blue of her daughter's eyes was a potent truth serum. Claire drew a deep breath. "Your dad and I had an argument. And I needed
—I needed—" Claire paused, shifting her gaze to the tall stand of trees by the woodshed.
"You know when you and your sister are fighting and I send you to your rooms to cool off?"
Andie nodded.
"Well, sometimes adults need to cool off, too."
"Is that what happened the last time you said Daddy went on a business trip? I saw his suitcase in the closet…"
Oh, my Lord. Claire remembered the way Kirk's clothing had been pushed to the side.
"He wasn't on a business trip, was he? You lied."
To protect you. Claire let her head sink onto her arms. "You're right, Andie. I should have told you the truth. But I didn't want you to worry." She trailed her fingers down Andie's soft cheek, then leaned in closer for a hug. Her daughter remained stiff, unyielding.
"I don't think it's very nice of you to go away when Daddy's only here for such a short time.
Maybe, if you were nicer to hull, Daddy would want to come more often and stay longer."
At times the demands of motherhood just were not fair. This was one of them. Was it her fault Kirk worked such long hours, had frequent business trips, often was tied up weekends? Didn't she wish he had more time for the family, too? But she would not say a word against Kirk to Andie.
"I'm sorry if you don't see as much of your dad as you'd like. But he's here today, right? Why not make the most of it."
Andie considered that for a minute, before pushing herself into a standing position. "Yeah. I guess."
Guilt crushed Claire's ribs as she watched her daughter go back into the cottage. If she and Kirk were to get divorced, Andie would see even less of her father.
Yet Claire wasn't sure she could go back to living with Kirk as if nothing had ever happened.
Finding that lipstick in Kirk's glove compartment should have been such a little thing. After all, it didn't change a single thing she already knew about Janice and Kirk. Yet that slender metal tube had put an image in her head that she just could not shake.
Janice in the car next to Kirk. Gliding on her lipstick as she anticipated their dinner together.
And at the end of the evening…a kiss. That woman had kissed her husband.
The Fourth Child Page 10